Sri Lanka came up with a strange yet sensible move on Monday in their final Super Eights game against England to avoid the captain or vice-captain being ruled out for the crucial semifinal of the ICC World Twenty20 for maintaining repeated slow over rates.
ICC regulations dictate that two slow over rate offences within a period of 12 months mean the captain of the side will receive a one-match ban for the country’s next game. Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene and vice-captain Angelo Mathews had already been found guilty of the offence once within the last year.
Another offence yesterday by the captain, whether Jayawardene or Mathews, would have meant that whoever led the side would miss out on the semifinals, and so Kumar Sangakkara captained the game.
“I will explain,” Jayawar-dene was quoted in The Island as saying. “The intentions were not bad. Obviously I had a warning after the last match. If I repeated the offence I miss the match. Kumar [Sanga-kkara] as the official captain went to the toss. It’s tough to bowl 20 overs in one hour 20 minutes. We try our best, but penalties are very harsh. We don’t want to miss out on big games and we did it with the right intentions.
“Angelo [Mathews] is the vice-captain and in that Pakistan game at Hamban-tota he was also found guilty of maintaining a slow over rate. If he gets nailed he misses a game as well. Don’t know what will happen tomorrow, I might get a phone call from the ICC. The move was suggested by our Manger Charith Senanayake and all credit to him.”
-With The Daily Star input
